


Five Gold Rings

by cissamione



Series: Twelve Days of Christmas [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 20:12:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17210165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cissamione/pseuds/cissamione
Summary: Five times the Doctor and River run into each other, sometimes literally.





	Five Gold Rings

**Author's Note:**

> Again not very Christmassy, but I love the Doctor and River so much :)  
> Enjoy!

One/Nine

“Oi!” The Doctor turned as the woman shouldered past him in the alley. Her heels click/clacked on the cracked and worn pavement, her long black coat flapping behind her. 

He looked to the concrete when he heard a tinkling sound, and saw an old gold ring spinning not far from his feet. He lifted his gaze up to the woman as she hurried away, the only person beside him in the alleyway. Her hair was long and blonde, darker at the roots and curled into soft waves that reached her lower back. 

“You’ve dropped something!” The Doctor shouted after her, and he bent down to pick the ring up between his thumb and forefinger. When he looked up again, he saw her head half turn towards him, her stride falter, then, before he could see her face, she carried on, clearly ignoring him.

“Doctor!” He spun around when he heard Rose’s voice, the mysterious woman slipping from his mind as he tucked the ring into a pocket of his leather jacket. “There you are!” Rose grinned at him, and he smiled back as she bumped him with her shoulder, the same place she woman had shoved him moments earlier. “Come on.” She took off walking in the direction she had come, mirroring the other woman at the end of the alley as they both turned and looked at the Doctor. Rose was met with a grin as he started towards her, and the other woman saw him back, retreating.

Two/Ten

The Doctor sat quietly in the TARDIS. Donna was taking a ‘nice, long bath. With NO interruptions, thank you very much’, so he left her to it. Instead he began fiddling with River Song’s screwdriver. He must know her, in his future, because she has-  _ had _ this, his screwdriver, with a couple of additions.

He began to take it apart slowly, carefully noting in his memory where each piece went. It wasn’t until he dropped one piece and it clattered to the floor that he realised it wasn’t a screwdriver piece. It was a gold ring.

Three/Eleven

Everything was new. So many words - names, things, places, ideas - buzzing around his head, a cacophony of knowledge. Even his brain was new, but filled lifetimes of ancient stuff. This body was new too, still learning how to be a body.

Now his first task was over, and he felt almost cut adrift as he wandered through the hospital. There was a sharp clang of metal on linoleum that he almost didn’t notice, and a woman with red hair and eyes the colour of a stormy sea stretched out her hand to him. In her palm sat a small gold ring, and she smiled shyly at him, ducking her face from his stare.

“You dropped this.” She said it quietly, unobtrusively, as if she had spent her whole life trying not to get in the way as she sunk away from the centre of the corridor.

He didn’t recognise it, it didn’t recognise him, but he took it from her soft hand anyway. Most likely, it was his, and his brain just hadn’t figured that out yet, it was quite busy right now, sorting all that information into its own system, different from his previous brains. “Thanks.” He said, force of habit after spending so long with humans, even when everything else was settling into place, he still had some human habits ingrained in his psyche.

She bobbed her head and turned to go, pushing a medical trolley. “No problem…” she breathed, “Doctor.”

It took him a minute to realise what she had said, and when he did, he looked and she was gone, disappeared.

Four/Twelve

Their time of Darillium together had been blissful.

He knew it was ending though, it always ended with River. He could sense her growing impatience, a sense of dissatisfaction. She felt tethered, and loath as he was to admit it, so did he.

There were no grand goodbyes when she did leave. Of course, she didn’t know that this was it for him, and they never got overly emotional, never displayed too much emotion with each other, because though they felt the same way, neither could know where the other was at in that journey of feeling.

The Doctor had managed to convince River to have dinner with him in the orange light of Darillium’s slow sunrise, and when they woke, she was gone, leaving only a gold ring on the console.

He picked it up gently, reverently, and he knew it had been her all along. The TARDIS popped open a drawer, and it held the three other rings, matching, that he had collected over the centuries, and he set the fourth down in it’s spot on the black velvet.

“River Song, you bad girl.”

Five/Thirteen

She’d never expected to see River again,  _ every _ tale ever told was the same, they spent their last night together on Darillium. But here she was, in Sheffield of all places. “RIVER!” The  Doctor hollered, she was still getting used to this new voice, it wasn’t as loud or commanding as she’d like, it required more work.

An old lady gave her a strange, kind look. “No, love. It’s a canal.”

“No, I mean, that’s a canal, but  _ that’s _ River.” the Doctor’s hands flailed about as she pointed in all different directions, then took off running after River. “RIVER! COME BACK!”

Up ahead of her, she saw River half turn, like she had that first time. “Doctor?” She asked, more to herself than to anyone as the Doctor finally caught up with her, and caught her up in a tight embrace.

“It was you all along. The rings. I’ve got them all. River, River,  _ River _ .”

River pushed the doctor back slightly. “Not all, my love.” She nodded to the old lady back down the street, who was waving one hand at the Doctor, the other outstretched, holding something.

The Doctor sent River a look that said ‘stay’, then she tore down the street, and grabbed the ring with a mumbled thanks, but when she turned back, River was gone. 

Again.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave kudos and comments, I try my hardest to reply to every comment I receive.


End file.
